


Not a Pleasant Condition

by Celticmuse5



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-21
Updated: 2011-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-26 09:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/281663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celticmuse5/pseuds/Celticmuse5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snape is affected by the fortunes of war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a Pleasant Condition

**Author's Note:**

> Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
> 
> Voltaire

December 1990  
The Three Broomsticks Pub  
Hogsmeade

Not a man given to frivolity even at the best of times, young Severus Snape was being positively antisocial at the moment. In a pub where every other witch and wizard was laughing, drinking Siegmunda’s Fine Ale, and shouting to be heard over the din of all the other witches and wizards who were laughing and drinking, Snape was an anomaly. He’d come to the pub early enough to snag a booth at the back of the room, and was now largely engulfed by shadows, a fact which to Snape’s dark-minded musings seemed both ironic and somehow portentous.

He’d just come from the nearby Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he’d accepted the recently vacated position of professor of Potions, beginning after the Winter Break. Snape had halfheartedly tried to convince Headmaster Albus Dumbledore that teaching the Defense Against the Dark Arts courses would be more in keeping with the role he was now playing, but he’d retreated from this course rather quickly in the face of the other man’s obvious reluctance. Dumbledore, Snape knew, was rather going out on a limb in hiring him at all. Best, for the moment, to bide his time and deal with the task at hand.

That task – and he could hardly believe it himself when he thought about all its ramifications – was to essentially be a double spy, gathering information for Dumbledore against Lord Voldemort, the Dark Wizard who currently held the wizarding community – and the Muggle world as well if they only knew of him – in a grim state of fear and loathing.

The Dark Mark on Snape’s forearm throbbed momentarily, as it was given to doing when its wearer entertained thoughts that might be considered seditious by the Dark Lord. Fortunately for Snape’s current project, the Dark Mark could not convey Snape’s change of heart to his former master, or else his plans – and his very life – would have been over as quickly as Voldemort or one of his true followers could utter one of the Forbidden Curses.

Signaling the bartender for another beer, Snape scanned the crowd, hoping that none of his former compatriots would take it into his head to initiate a meeting tonight. Weeks of soul-searching, doubts and counter-doubts, not to mention the careful negotiations with Dumbledore, the confessing of things which Snape had hoped never to have to remember again, let alone reveal to a man whom he respected – all these things left him without much in the way of energy for sparring and deflecting that particular evening. He wasn’t even really sure what had possessed him to come to the pub, except that the thought of flying back to his empty house tonight left him unaccountably weary.

A figure appeared at the table, interrupting Snape’s musings, and he was about to tell him to shove off when he saw the beer in his hand. Nodding his head in a brief show of thanks, Snape reached for the beer, hoping the server would take the hint and go bother some other patron with whatever folksy chatter he might have planned concerning the Cannons, the weather, or the recent decline in the Galleon versus the French Temps.

“Still a stuck-up prat, eh, Severus? I’d hoped some things would change as we all got older, but no such luck.”

Stiffening, Snape glared at his visitor. Coldly, he replied, “Alone are you, Pettigrew? How rare a thing to find you without your gang. Or should that be your…pack?” he sneered, wincing inside at remembering yet again the unmitigated fear he’d felt at facing Remus Lupin in werewolf form. The fear was unalterably mixed up with his mingled gratitude and embarrassment when James had rescued him barely in time, and the anger and hatred toward Sirius Black that he carried still.

Peter Pettigrew smiled broadly, and sat down in the booth opposite Snape, completely ignoring the other man’s scowl of disapproval. Taking a sip from his own pint of ale, he regarded Snape with faint curiosity.

“The others are all off on various adventures right now. Sirius is exploring a witch’s burial pyramid in Egypt; he’ll be gone a few months. Remus is doing research in America on Muggle accounts of vampires and werewolves in their historical literature. And James… Well, you know about the birth of his son, I trust? James and Lily are trying somehow to build a life as a family in these Dark times.”

Snape nodded carefully. “I wish them well.”

“Of course you do, of course. Tell me, Severus, what are you doing in Hogsmeade? Surely you’d be more comfortable in Knockturn Alley these days?”

Severus stiffened in his seat. “Pettigrew, I don’t know what rumours you’ve been listening to, but let me set the record straight for you. Yes, I was a follower of Lord Voldemort, but no longer. I’ve renounced him; you can ask anyone at the Ministry of Magic and they’ll tell you it’s true. In fact,” Snape smiled coldly at the other man, “not that’s it’s any of your business, but I’m starting a teaching position at Hogwarts in less than a month.”

The other man blinked once, then once more, his mouth hanging open. Sitting back, he seemed to be at a loss as to what to say next. Snape did not assist him.

“Well, well. I guess I am surprised, but I probably shouldn’t be, should I?”

Snape snapped, “What exactly does that mean?”

“Oh, never mind, it’s not important.”

“Look, this catching up business has been thoroughly enjoyable, but I really have to be going now. You understand, I’m sure?” Snape slid toward the edge of the booth, and was almost to his feet when Pettigrew spoke again.

“Like some company on the way home, Severus?”

He froze. “Company?” he questioned, wondering if he’d really heard the note of flirtation in the other man’s voice that he thought he had.

“You know, a little companionship on a cold winter’s night. Someone to talk to, or whatever. Someone to have…breakfast with?” Pettigrew looked at the table in front of him as he spoke, as if Snape’s answer meant little or nothing to him, but he could not completely disguise the longing in his voice.

Snape stared at him, unable to decide how he should respond, or even what he was feeling. True enough, Pettigrew had never exactly been high on his list of friends, but he was never as much of an enemy as the other Marauders either. He was attractive enough, in a rumpled sort of way, and in any case such offers were rare in Snape’s life.

But there was something, something he couldn’t put his finger on, that bade him walk away.

“Thank you for the offer, Peter, but I really must decline. I have much to do before I return to Hogwarts in the New Year, I’m sure you know how it is. But thank you again.” And he turned to walk away. But Pettigrew’s caustic response carried to him anyway, over the waning noise of the dwindling pub crowd.

"Still holding out for what you can never have, are you? They've got each other, don't they? And the boy, too, now. Don't hold your breath, Severus. No matter how loudly you renounce your master, James and Lily will not fall madly in love with you."

Snape did not stop, did not indicate by the slightest slowing down that he had heard. But it cost him greatly to do so, and when he reached the out-of-doors, he released a bolt of magic into a nearby silver birch that sent it straight up into the air. When it came back down to earth, the tree stood a foot shorter and had developed a wracking cough.

Grabbing his waiting broom, Snape took to the sky, and never once looked back.

 

August 1991  
Wizard High Court

In the third row of spectators, Severus Snape stood by rote as the prisoner Sirius Black was wrested from the dock and taken off to Azkaban. He did not know what he felt. James and Lily were dead, Peter was dead. Voldemort had seemingly been vanquished by a babe-in-arms. It was all too much to make sense of.

Sirius Black, the man who had risked Severus’ life years before, the man who had effectively killed three people who were supposed to be dear to him, would never be released from Azkaban, and would never be a danger to another person. But with James, Lily and Peter dead so terribly young, Snape could not feel the satisfaction he so desperately longed for.

And Voldemort… The Dark Lord was not dead, but he may as well have been. Snape was freer of the Death Eaters than he’d been at any time since he was eighteen, but he could not help feeling as if the price had been too high, both for himself and for the boy.

The boy. Harry. The boy had lived where his parents had perished. Obviously, he was special in some way. Special, and most likely highly dangerous. At that thought, Snape sensed a change in himself, a thawing of the ice encasing him in the week since Black had been captured, but in favour of what he wasn’t yet certain.

Perhaps it was wrong of him, but Snape didn’t think of Harry Potter in the same way that other witches and wizards had begun to. For him, the phrase “The Boy Who Lived” would inexorably bring to mind the faces of those who hadn’t. Lily, who fought desperately to the end to save her son. James, who had been able to save Snape years before, but who couldn’t save himself – or rather whom Snape was certain had sacrificed himself to gain extra time for Lily and the boy to get away. And Peter, who had tried to reach out to Snape months before, however obliquely, and for whom Snape never would have predicted a hero’s death.

Snape didn’t know what the future would bring, but he was quite certain that the events of the past month had not ended Voldemort’s reign of terror, but only delayed its conclusion. And the boy would have a part to play when Voldemort returned; there was no doubt in Snape’s mind about that. It all bore keeping a close watch on Potter, something Snape was quite ambivalent toward.

But he knew his own misgivings could not enter into it. He’d made a promise to Dumbledore, and he intended to honour it, if more for private reasons. Together with Dumbledore, Hagrid, and McGonagall, they would keep watch over Harry, guarding the house where he would grow up, ensuring that the wizarding world kept its distance until such time as the boy was able to cope with being its hero.

But in Snape’s mind, the boy was not the hero of the story. A catalyst, perhaps, but not a hero. Peter Pettigrew was the true hero, and eventually the boy would learn the truth of that, if Snape had anything to say about it.

 

End


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